


Recovery

by Notmycatsname



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dreams and Nightmares, Hogwarts, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Post-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, RS Fireside Tales, Remus Lupin Lives, Sirius Black Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-15 15:28:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29191575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Notmycatsname/pseuds/Notmycatsname
Summary: The castle is different than Remus remembers. Maybe it's grieving too.Remus and Sirius return to Hogwarts a year after the end of the war. It's not how it used to be.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 2
Kudos: 29
Collections: RS Fireside Tales Vol.3





	Recovery

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt:  
> "While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped
> 
> Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin,
> 
> And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing
> 
> Hopes of high talk with the departed dead."
> 
> – Percy Bysshe Shelley, Hymn to Intellectual Beauty

The castle is different than he remembers. It was different when Remus came back in ‘93, like revisiting an old childhood home with new tenants, like living in deja vu but with everything moved slightly to the left. But now it feels almost unrecognizable as the same place. It’s the same castle, of course, he can see that, even after everything it went through. Bright candles still light the Great Hall, shining down on the grand mahogany tables. His classroom looks virtually the same with large windows ushering in the sunlight, a stone staircase leading to his office on the floor above. Hell, even Peeves haunts the same spots, rattling empty suits of armor whenever anyone walks by, just like nearly 30 years before. But it’s still different. Empty, void of personality or familiarity. 

“This place is fucking weird,” Sirius mutters as he drops a cardboard box full of books heavily on Remus’s office desk. The slam of the box shakes him out of his daze and he moves from his spot by the window to help Sirius unpack the books, preferring to organize by hand instead of by magic. It’s been unusually warm the past week, almost sweltering for a Scotland summer but there’s a chill throughout the castle. It should feel good after being outside, lugging a trunk full of teaching supplies from their house outside Hogsmeade. It’s a bit of a walk but the dog in Sirius loves it and Remus can’t deny him that. Even trudging up the long path to Hogwarts today in the heat had been worth it to see him tilt his head back to take in the sun on his face. Remus had been sweating by the time they got to the castle and he almost misses that now, standing in the cool stagnant air of his office. 

“It does have an odd feel about it.” He takes a book from Sirius’s hand and shelves it in the large oak bookcase. “Could just be psychosomatic, though,” Remus mumbles as he takes two more books from the pile.

“Oh look at you, Mr. Educated,” Sirius teases, flopping down on the floor next to the bookcase, clearly not inclined to help unpack anymore. He knows better, has always thought of Remus’s method of organization as well-constructed chaos. “But _you_ feel it too, you just admitted it. Can’t be psychosomatic if we both think the castle feels like a graveyard.”

Remus just hums a little in thought as he finishes unpacking the books, arranging them by color on the shelves. “Yeah, but think about the last time we were at Hogwarts,” he reasons, leaning back against his desk, “the last few times, really. Fighting a war was sort of miserable,” Sirius snorts at the understatement, “and before that, you were a fugitive and I was, y’know, terribly alone and depressed.” Remus looks around the room a final time for anything else that could be out of place. “Neither experience was one that’s going to warrant happy memories.”

“Right but bad associations aren’t going to make this whole castle feel empty and bleak despite being full of furniture and staff and everything. Not to mention, really fucking cold.”

“Perhaps they’ve made great leaps in the innovation of cooling charms,” Remus says dryly. He turns to look out the window so Sirius won’t see the grin he can’t quite hold back but he can hear Sirius chuckle as he hoists himself from the floor. 

“You are such an asshole,” Sirius says with love, wrapping his arms around Remus’s middle from behind. He presses a series of purposely wet kisses to Remus’s neck and he squirms in his embrace, laughing. “We about done here? Ghoulish glass jars organized by size, books by color, grindylows by...creepiness?” Sirius eyes the two tanks warily. “Why are they in separate containers?”

“That little one is too aggressive to go in with the others,” Remus mutters. The lone grindylow sneers at the two of them as if to prove his point. “But yes, we’re done. Everything’s in order.”

Humming a little, Sirius squints at the creature in the tank and squeezes his arms tighter around Remus. “It’s still early. We have another hour or so before dinner.” He hooks his chin on Remus’s shoulder and gives him a lewd grin, drawing his hands down to the waistband of Remus’s trousers. 

Remus rolls his eyes but can’t help but smile at Sirius as he checks his watch, shaking his head. “One minute you’re talking about how the place feels like a graveyard and the next-”

“I’m multifaceted, Remus, come on, keep up,” Sirius mutters, teeth digging into Remus’s earlobe before he drags him up the stairs to his office. 

***

Dinner was an interesting affair, with plenty of new faces decorating the staff table. Remus hadn’t been able to make the two days of staff training the first time he taught at Hogwarts and was dreading it this time around. He knows that he’s a good teacher. He proved it to himself everyday when he stood at the front of the classroom and _saw_ how interested the students were in the subject, when he noticed how much students like Neville improved throughout the school year, when he watched them fight years later against real life Dark Arts. But there’s still a voice in his head telling him he doesn't belong at the table beside real adult professors, even though he’s far from the youngest person on staff now. 

It looks like it’ll be a good school year, though, with plenty of talented and well-qualified professors for Hogwarts’ first year back in session since the end of the war. Remus wagers they all feel like they have a little something to prove this year, but it’s not really like they could do much worse than the year prior, he had half-joked to Sirius. Tomorrow will be a day full of meetings and training sessions to make sure everyone is prepared for the year to come. Remus is terrified of it, truthfully but at least he already has one year under his belt. 

They had decided to stay the night at Hogwarts, in sleeping quarters off of Remus’s office instead of trying to race back to the castle for his first meeting at eight in the morning. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, giving Remus more time to sleep, but he’s not sure on that decision now. Shadows dance around the small room as the trees bristle in the wind outside, lit by the bright half-moon. Remus knows it’s a trick of the light, but he can’t stop himself from following the dark shapes around the room. He swears he sees a figure out of the corner of his eye but when he turns his head to make sure, it’s gone. It reminds him of a night he and Sirius spent together at Grimmauld Place, entirely too stoned and convinced that something dark was lurking right out of view. Their paranoia then could be explained by their high but now, Remus doesn’t know what is to blame. 

Remus squeezes his eyes shut and rolls onto his side, curling up against Sirius. He tries to concentrate on Sirius’s snuffling breaths, counting his deep inhales instead of letting his mind wander to the wind rattling faroff parts of the castle. _One...two...three...four,_ he brings one hand up to rest against Sirius’s chest and finds some comfort in the steady beating of his heart. _Thirteen...fourteen... fifteen,_ Remus relaxes into the soft mattress, soothed by Sirius’s presence. He lets the tension leave his body, his eyes no longer squeezed tight but shut softly, following the pattern of the breath next to him. 

Until it stops. 

Remus jolts out of his light doze and sits straight up in bed. The space beside him is empty. It isn’t even warm. He looks around the room quickly, trying not to panic, to will his heart rate to slow down. There’s no sign of Sirius anywhere, not even a hint that he had ever been here. It crosses his mind that this could be a dream. That would make sense, that’s the reasonable answer. But this feels...so real. 

He hasn’t dreamed in a few years, not since Sirius was swallowed up and spit back out by the Veil. He had been plagued by nightmares then, so vivid and lifelike that he could _swear_ that he was back in the Department of Mysteries, watching Sirius get sucked into the Veil, torn apart as it ate him piece by piece. He had overdone it with a Dreamless Sleep Draught, a stupid and wreckless decision that could have resulted in an overdose with a microscopicly heavier hand. But it worked. The visions stopped plaguing him in his sleep and he hasn’t dreamed since. Remus really isn’t keen to welcome dreams back into his life, especially if they’re like this. 

Remus sits in the bed a while longer, rubbing the soft cotton sheet between his thumb and forefinger. It certainly feels real. Would he be able to wonder this much if something was a dream if he truly were dreaming? He wouldn’t put it past his subconscious to find a new way to taunt him, a new dream state to bring more worry and doubt into his life now that the war is over and things are calm. 

A thought flashes through his mind, a terrifying one that makes his blood run cold. Remus launches from the bed and rushes to the attached bathroom. He breathes a sigh of relief when he sees Sirius’s toothbrush, his discarded jeans, his stupid tattoo gel that he never remembers to put the cap on. For a horrifying second, Remus was worried that he had...made Sirius up. That he really had been destroyed by the Veil and Remus, in a fit of grief, had created this image of their life together because he couldn’t handle being alone. That everyone had played along because they felt sorry for him; poor, pitiful Remus who lost everything once already.

But that isn’t true, he tells himself, heart still thudding. Sirius is real, he’s alive. He’s just not here. Remus hurries back to the bedroom and throws on a jumper and jeans. It seems stupid to search the castle for him but he doesn’t know what else he should do. He steps out into the hall, wand in hand. He’s not sure what he expects to see. It’s dark in the hallway but Remus blinks hard a couple of times and his vision adjusts.

He doesn’t want to cast a Lumos, doesn’t want to bring attention to himself although he appears to be alone in the hallway. There’s no signs of life, no footprints on the hard stone floor, no blood or dirt or _anything_. Remus takes another few steps into the hallway to search further when he hears something.

It’s a subtle sound, so faint that he doesn’t think he would hear it if he weren’t a werewolf. But it’s there, present enough now that Remus knows he isn’t imagining it. It’s a scuttling sound coming from far down the hall, a light scurrying and tapping of tiny feet. The sound causes the hairs on his arms to stand on end, brings his tense shoulders up and forwards, makes him feel like the small feet are darting across his skin. The noise sets him on edge but he finds himself moving towards it, finds he can’t stop himself from taking step after step after step towards the pattering, towards the Herbology corridor and the greenhouses. 

There’s a soft glow of a light on the third greenhouse, slight as if lit by a single wick. Remus trudges forward, although he’s not sure he wants to but he feels a pull deep in his stomach. He stops abruptly once he passes the threshold, as if the tug forward dissipates. The scuttling is louder here. He realizes then that he’s standing on a sharp sliver of a broken flower pot sitting on a bed of spread soil. He’s barefoot. He wonders why he didn’t notice that walking on the cool stone floor in the castle. 

A trail of soil leads to a fallen terracotta pot, shattered into dozens of pieces on the floor. Beside it is a writhing Mandrake, silent except for the rustling of its limbs against the dirt. Remus doesn’t remember a great deal from Herbology but he doesn’t think that’s typical behavior for a Mandrake, especially not without a great deal of screaming. Its wrinkled, ugly face is twisted up and angry like a screeching infant and Remus thinks briefly of what Harry described seeing after being struck by the killing curse, the distorted and grotesque form that Voldemort took then. What he sees a few feet from the Mandrake nearly stops his heart. 

Sirius lies curled up on the stone. There’s something about his pose, his curved spine, arms crossed at the wrists, hands open with almost grasping fingers...it makes him look fragile, almost like a child. Symbols are drawn out on either side of him that Remus can’t quite place, maybe something relating to Alchemy? And the scuttling...Remus feels a wave of nausea rise up in his throat and threaten to spill over when he finds the source of the scuttling.

Rats. Perhaps a dozen of them, perhaps more, stuck together at their tails by a sticky-looking putrid substance. They climb over one another, digging their sharp claws into their flanks and squealing softly in pain as their nails cut into their skin, each one pulling the hoard this way and that and spinning around in circles just inches from where Sirius lies. Their mass looks like a monstrous crown sitting atop his head and Remus longs to rush forward, to gather Sirius into his arms and hold him safely, away from the dirt and runes and rats and carry him back to their house but he can’t. His brain is screaming at his body, pleading his legs to move forward, his arms to grab Sirius’s unconscious form but they won’t cooperate and Remus stands completely still as the rats circle and the Mandrake wriggles and Sirius is sprawled like a sacrifice in the middle of the wreckage. 

Remus wakes up then. It’s not a jolt or a sudden rush of relief. Just slowly, as if coming out of a fog, like his body is simply done resting. He keeps his eyes closed for a few breaths, feeling the soft give of a warm body next to him, the firm mattress beneath him and the heavy blanket on top of him. Remus blinks one eye open tentatively and sees Sirius lying next to him, not curled up but sprawled with one of his hands resting atop Remus’s on his own chest. He’s definitely breathing but Remus remains still for a few moments longer, again counting the breaths until he reaches twenty. He’s...not sure how he feels. His heartbeat is slow and steady but his hands are shaking and his brain is trying to make sense of what just happened or didn’t happen, what must have been a dream but felt so _real_.

He takes another deep breath in and pushes the blanket down to his waist. Remus wonders if he has any cigarettes left and sits up out of bed to check when Sirius’s hand flies out and grips tightly around his wrist. 

“Hey,” he says quickly, cupping Sirius’s face with one hand and placing the other firmly on his chest. Sirius is breathing quickly, practically panting and his eyes dart quickly around the room before landing on Remus. “Hey, it’s okay, you’re okay, Sirius. I’m right here.” Remus brushes the hair off of Sirius’s sweaty forehead, rubs his thumb against where his heart is pounding in his chest. 

“Jesus,” Sirius grumbles, squeezing his eyes shut to gain back some composure. “I felt like...I just…” He sits up and rubs his hands down his face, rests his head on bent knees. “Where’re you going?”

“Smoke,” Remus mumbles, more shaken now than before after seeing Sirius so rattled. He crawls out of bed on wobbly legs and stumbles over to his bag to dig through it. 

“Thought you were quitting.” 

Remus grunts a little in response, rummaging around a bit more until he pulls out a crushed pack with a single cigarette in it and pushes open the window. “Now is not the time,” he says after he lights the cigarette with a snap of fingers and takes a slow pull of it. “Not after…”

“Did you... I guess it was a dream?” Sirius asks, getting out of bed and wandering over to Remus, wrapping his arms around him. “It didn’t feel like a dream.”

“No,” Remus says around an exhale of smoke. “No, it didn’t. What was yours? Was it the same as mine, I wonder?”

Sirius shakes his head as if trying to clear his mind and squeezes his arms a little tighter around Remus’s middle. “It’s not...it’s fading already but I was just falling over and over again and each time I’d land in this huge pile of mulch and you’d be there, digging yourself up but I’d be gone again by the time you could get out.” He rests his head on Remus’s shoulder and Remus leans heavily back against him, breathing in the smell of his soap and his worn t-shirt and trying to remember if he could smell in the dream. “I could never quite get to you and it was...I mean, fuck, Remus, it felt _so_ real.” He sighs heavily. “Yours?”

Remus plays the events back in his head, trying to find the meaning in them. There must be a meaning, his first dream in nearly four years _has_ to have a meaning. “You were gone. I was here, in this room, in that bed and you were just gone.” Remus closes his eyes to concentrate on the details. “Then you were just...lying there and there were these drawings, maybe sigils or runes, a Mandrake, and - and a rat king?” He draws the smoke into his lungs, trying to piece anything together. “Rat kings are about interconnectedness, are about…”

“What the fuck are you on about?”

“I…” Remus blows a final puff of smoke out the open window before stubbing his cigarette out and sliding the half left back in the pack for later. “I used to date this man who was really into figuring out the meaning in dreams. I thought it was all bullshit, I still do but...there _has_ to be meaning in that, right?” He tilts his head back to look at Sirius, starting to feel a little like he’s losing it now. “I don’t know, I think I was wrong when I said..psychosomatic, I mean it _has_ to be something.”

Sirius only hums and presses a kiss to his temple. “Was he a wizard or a muggle?”

“What?”  
  


“The man you dated.”

“Does it matter?”

A shrug. “Might. There’s different connotations for a lot of these things. Like, Mandrakes mean something very different for us than they do for muggles relying on, y’know stories and fiction. Probably rats too.”

“He was a squib.” Remus shakes his head again. “I don’t know, it just...it feels so abstract.”

They stand there in silence for a few minutes in front of the open window. The slight breeze feels good against Remus’s skin, makes him feel alive and present and _here_. He concentrates on the feeling of Sirius’s fingers pressing into his arm, the sound of the wind outside, the sour taste of the cigarette still lingering in his mouth and tells himself again and again that he is here, that this is real. 

“I think,” Sirius starts, slowly and thoughtfully, “that this castle has been home to too much chaos. And we keep patching it up and saying it’s as good as new when it’s...I mean, there’s been _so much_ destruction here and I don’t know how any one place can be home to all that.”

“How do you figure?”  
  


“Isn’t there like, some muggle saying about trying polish shit?”

Remus snorts and turns in Sirius’s arms to face him, to bury his head in his neck. “That’s sort of a crass summary of an already gross phrase but yes.”

“Then that’s what I mean. After Grimmauld I’d say I’m almost an expert on sentient buildings, places that have just seen too much shit. I think this is one of them.”

Hogwarts has seen a hell of a lot, Remus figures: a basilisk slithering through the pipes, dementors patrolling the parameter, an entire battle, plus the death of a dark lord and the loss of more innocent lives than Remus would like to count, and that’s just within the past ten years. Perhaps Sirius is right, maybe this place has just taken too much damage, damage that no amount of remodeling and new paint and sweeping up can repair. 

“I...I think you could be right, actually.”

Sirius laughs softly into Remus’s hair. “Can I get that in writing?”

“Oh, don’t pull that straight man bullshit with me, you’re right plenty and you know that.” Remus leans back, smiling at him. He brings his hands to Sirius’s waist, rubs his thumbs into the plush, soft skin of his stomach and just _feels_ him again, the both of them alive and awake and most definitely not in a dream. “Do you think we’ll sound insane if we tell McGonagal this theory in the morning?”

Sirius shrugs again. “Oh, probably,” he sighs. “But she’s probably wondered if we haven’t lost it a dozen times over by this point. I’d say we’re just being predictable now.” He tilts his head down to kiss Remus softly. “I think, though, that there might be something to be gained in rebuilding after all this. In a truly fresh start. There’s still evil and shit out there but, I mean, we’ve pushed through alright. Maybe this old place can do the same with enough care.”

  
Remus smiles against his lips. “You’re getting sentimental in your old age,” he mutters but Sirius only smiles. _There again,_ Remus thinks, _he could be right._

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!


End file.
